KingPin
Well-Known Member
Well as luck would have it I found myself with time and desire to get my keg up and running for Soda. I decided to keg up only sparking water and use my sodastream and other syrups to make my sodas. This is my story.
I started by taking my keg apart; having never done this before I still found it surprisingly easy to do. I didnt have a deep socket so i muddled about with a smaller wrent to pull the posts off. after this I gave everything a good soaking with PBW and then rinsed with plenty of cold water.
I put everything together and did my pressure test; put the gas on and pressured up to 30psi - seals held and I was pretty happy.
I took everything back apart and sanitized; I used aseptox as I had that on hand from when I was doing bottles. Again; nice thorough rinse.
Then I put in about 3 gal. plain old cold tap water. Brought my keg up to 30 PSI and shook the crap out of it off and on over an hour. This is where I made a newb mistake. For whatever reason I ended up putting the gas line on the in post - it got good and stuck. I actually had to work hard to get it off. I don't think I'll ever make that mistake again regardless of thinking "hey wouldn't it be nice to have the gas bubble up through the water?".
I let the works sit over night with the gas on still at 30 psi in my cold storage room. I'm not sure of the temperature in my cold storage room but I do know its uncomfortably cold on bare feet.
The next night I came back and gave myself a heart attack as I saw my gas gauge had dropped considerably. I figured I had a leak so I took my set up back to the kitchen and proceeded to check for leaks.
I didn't find any leaks but I leave the set up on my kitchen counter over night. By the next morning my gas was back to where it should be and then I remembered my chemistry classes about cold gases under pressure. Silly me.
For the serving line I picked up some 3/16 refrigerator water line from home depot (25 feet). I must admit that it did impart a small off flavour but nothing off putting. I used a cheap picnic tap on the end.
At serving time I purged the gas from the keg and lowered the Co2 to ~ 10psi. This seemed the sweet for serving without excessive foam.
Now I don't know if i did something wrong but there didn't seem to be a heck of alot of carbonation in my water; this is after roughly 4 days under 30psi and being shaken and moved around chilled and warmed up etc.
However the level of carbonation in the water was still enough to make the kidlets happy and make me want to try this again later. Perhaps with putting the keg in the fridge with a gas line to the Co2 outside of the fridge etc.
All in all it was not as difficult to get it going as I thought. If you have any questions or whatnot feel free to post and I'll answer what I can.
I started by taking my keg apart; having never done this before I still found it surprisingly easy to do. I didnt have a deep socket so i muddled about with a smaller wrent to pull the posts off. after this I gave everything a good soaking with PBW and then rinsed with plenty of cold water.
I put everything together and did my pressure test; put the gas on and pressured up to 30psi - seals held and I was pretty happy.
I took everything back apart and sanitized; I used aseptox as I had that on hand from when I was doing bottles. Again; nice thorough rinse.
Then I put in about 3 gal. plain old cold tap water. Brought my keg up to 30 PSI and shook the crap out of it off and on over an hour. This is where I made a newb mistake. For whatever reason I ended up putting the gas line on the in post - it got good and stuck. I actually had to work hard to get it off. I don't think I'll ever make that mistake again regardless of thinking "hey wouldn't it be nice to have the gas bubble up through the water?".
I let the works sit over night with the gas on still at 30 psi in my cold storage room. I'm not sure of the temperature in my cold storage room but I do know its uncomfortably cold on bare feet.
The next night I came back and gave myself a heart attack as I saw my gas gauge had dropped considerably. I figured I had a leak so I took my set up back to the kitchen and proceeded to check for leaks.
I didn't find any leaks but I leave the set up on my kitchen counter over night. By the next morning my gas was back to where it should be and then I remembered my chemistry classes about cold gases under pressure. Silly me.
For the serving line I picked up some 3/16 refrigerator water line from home depot (25 feet). I must admit that it did impart a small off flavour but nothing off putting. I used a cheap picnic tap on the end.
At serving time I purged the gas from the keg and lowered the Co2 to ~ 10psi. This seemed the sweet for serving without excessive foam.
Now I don't know if i did something wrong but there didn't seem to be a heck of alot of carbonation in my water; this is after roughly 4 days under 30psi and being shaken and moved around chilled and warmed up etc.
However the level of carbonation in the water was still enough to make the kidlets happy and make me want to try this again later. Perhaps with putting the keg in the fridge with a gas line to the Co2 outside of the fridge etc.
All in all it was not as difficult to get it going as I thought. If you have any questions or whatnot feel free to post and I'll answer what I can.
